Pronouncing “King Abdullah” in Arabic

January 10, 2009 — Nijma

This is way cool. I just checked back with Forvo, a website for listening to words pronounced in their own languages. Last week I posted the name of Jordan’s King Abdullah II ( الملك عبد الله الثاني بن الحسين) to be pronounced by a native speaker. Already someone from Jordan has made a recording of the pronunciation. Thanks, lkurdi!

Here’s a breakdown of the Arabic, in case you don’t want to go to the effort with google translate:

الملك king (malik, actually al-malik if you include the definite article)

عبد الله Abdullah (two separate words عبد adb slave or servant and الله Allah, God–it is forbidden to name anyone “slave” without adding “God” or a name of God). It looks like separate word here, but is actually one word, because the letter dahlد does not connect to any letter that follows it.

الثاني the second (ithani, actually al-ithani with the definite article)

بن son of (bin, technially ibinابن is son )

الحسين Hussein (al-Hussein or “the Hussein”– of course this would be the late King Hussein, Abdullah’s father)